


hunger pains (you were dead by the time that i had found you)

by lordbobby



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Annoying Metaphor, Canon Compliant, Gore, Graphic Gore Mentions, Other, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:55:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28102797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lordbobby/pseuds/lordbobby
Summary: "And I wanna build a tower / To all the nicer things you could have been / But I don’t like it"The Hunt says, don’t you remember the old games? How they all ended the same? The Hunt smiles, a body of carnage and death slowly being burnt. Ribs that no longer function as ribs jutting out from a transformed body mangled from original purpose.Don’t you remember that weeping flower, Tonner? How you were always prey from the start?
Relationships: Basira Hussain/Alice "Daisy" Tonner, Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist/Alice "Daisy" Tonner
Comments: 3
Kudos: 9





	hunger pains (you were dead by the time that i had found you)

Running made it easier not to think. Something about the _chase_ that cleared all other processes. It was the way the Hunt wanted her, dogged and dry heaving, paws caked in mud from her endless persistence. (It is not persistence. It is not drive, but there is no negative way to explain how she does not stop.)  
  
The sky is a miasma of mauve and purple, a sickening mist or fog swirling around. Wind howls. No trees paint the horizon. No familiar skylines, no broken forest clearings. She had passed through the woods ages ago, where parasites and ticks took their fill from the Body That Was No Longer Her Body. Fleas loved the coarse, sharp hair that coated her, that hid the ridges of her spine, the blooming flower scar that wept like an open wound.

The Hunt says, _it is so I may always find you._ It is a lie, as the Hunt has never had to tell the truth, Daisy simply needed to listen.

It was like this the world looked to her: a high-strung desert full of red rocks and bursts of damp earth like watering holes of bile. The ground was a deep puce, the color scabs or ripe plums. Land that took beating after beating and refused to turn. Sometimes the dust would kick up and get into Daisy’s nose, and she’d snort what looked like dried blood for hours after. Most of the time she just ran through it, because the string to follow, like tendons of an extended muscle twinging in her chest, was still there. _Your work is not done,_ The Hunt whispers, a soothing voice in her ears. _A little further, come._ And it tells her of who, as if she does not recognize their scent. The game is less about telling, and more about watching a great beast growl in anticipation.

 _A human,_ the Hunt sneers, because it has long dropped the notion that humans were not monsters, _believing to be protecting his own._

This is enough to send her fully dark. Dark where thoughts run together. Dark like her fur. See Daisy. See Daisy _run._ Into the assembly line, what may be a heart thundering in her ears. He must know she's here, know she's coming. Daisy hears the Hunt calling, louder. _In here. In **here.**_ It is so loud, Daisy cannot think of her name. Cannot think of who she is, or who she was before. Sounds hone and hollow, ringing and buzzing around her. Teeth buzz, and then grow more teeth. Knocking down doors with raw force. Primal shrieks coming from somewhere deep. **Come. Closer. Come.**

It takes the peeled back lips of a beast on the man’s throat to silence this stream of orders. It is the only time she is able- or allowed really- to think. The kill itself is not as satisfying as the tracking itself. Feet to dirt, nose to the air. The smell of bone marrow twisting to briar, into petals and leaves. Most would be done by now, but Daisy is not.  
Daisy pulls and snaps her jaw around bones, loosening organs to display them like trophies. Daisy made it pretty. It was incomprehensible to anyone but the artist, but this dillydallying was the closest she could get to giving sighs. Slashes of red (always red. She was surrounded by it, drowning-) mark the walls, the remaining identifiers that made this man _prey_ strewn about.  
  
(Basira would recognize him.)  
  
Thinking her name makes her hulking body crumple. Concrete on her chest, her head. Remembering was worse now, felt like barbs and bullets. Worse still was the rearing hand of the Hunt, beckoning her on. Beckoning her under.

It was her presentation that set her apart. Back in Hunt’s domain- in that blood red forest- it made her Other. It made the Hunt sing in amusement. Perhaps it liked it when she could be lucid enough to know this was _wrong,_ that she might have been something different, but then the call is back, a twist of her tendons, and if she does not keep moving... she must keep moving. The Hunt pulls on her chain. This was all she could do now, her quiet rebellion- reflection. In these moments, Daisy wanted nothing more than to be found. It took a hunter to know when it was being hunted. Never close enough keep pace with her, but always in the foreground. A woman who she might know if she were closer, if she dared. So Daisy leaves her signs, mementos. Bouquets of muscle and pawprints in blood. A body with the teeth chewed out of the face, spilled onto strung out intestines. Two lungs, broken ribcages, a heart missing.  
  
But it hurts to be hungry.

She’s Hunting again before she can think on it, the tinny stench of bile and blood and rot dripping from a maw long forgone of anything but incisors. Jaw falls slack, eyes focused ahead. When it rains here, if it rains, the smell of acid is as pungent as the brimstone. If it is brimstone. There are so many things that are not things anymore, but when she Hunts, Daisy cannot think about any of them. Nothing but what is ahead, what is next. Then the Hunt starts to go quiet, to smile. _Wait._

Her hunter has company. Another figure, blameless and faded and covered in cobwebs. Her hulking head twists and all Daisy can see are the inky black tendrils of _knowing_ swarming around his scalp _._ Sometimes she looked at Him and saw a monster. Peering through clearings or between feasts (whoever was eating), she would sometimes see Him and could see the inkblot form of His body. The many eyes perched on His skin, the glow of green hidden beneath Him. Those tendrils coiling, reaching out or below or plunging into concrete walls to listen to the pleas from other sides. The fear He drank in, the way He would erase others, break down avatars under the Gaze of his favored patron. As if He wasn’t any better.

Faintly, flickers of memory designate the knowledge of those tendrils of death, and Daisy cannot help but think that instead of those tendrils latching onto him, they are ebbing from his body. A focal point of death, one Daisy must, _must_ take out.

Closer now, in the quiet of a forest that had not always been a forest, she can smell her. Cardamom and chiles, gunmetal and musty clothes. Her huntress, trying to decide how to put her out. Daisy is almost honored by the forethought. Somewhere inside her the woman starts to weep. There’s another smell, old newspapers, and tea leaves and dry erase marker. Something sharp and foreign yet all too-

The moment Daisy can name him, her body lunges forward. His leg easily slides between her teeth. Jon. And he is alive (Jon) and he is whimpering, even if Daisy is locking him into the present. Weighing him down into (Jon) the physical. She can’t hear him (Jon), not really. She is but a wiry wolf, (kill) starved and gorged (save), teeth sank (kill) into pairs of eyes (keep) and-

_“Daisy! Stop! Please.”_

She wants to bite him to save him. She wants to bite him to kill him. How easily could she tear him now? (It would have been easier the first time.) Auroras of green spiral around his head. (Jon) is screaming, or trying to be calm, but his heart isn’t. It is fast and panicked. Daisy can smell it on him, every fear she’d never drank up until now.

_“Part…ner.”_

The cock of a rifle, and then there she is. (can you see me were you fast in enough just in time im sorry) The Hunt smiles. The Hunt grins. _Good job._ And then, urging. _Bring her._ And it is only then she remembers her name once more, so she may speak with her broken teeth.

_“…‘Sira…”_

It seems to break her. Jon (jon jon keep still stay kill save put down-) is holding his breath and Martin (yes, safe jon saved jon jon keep kill save tear) is begging for someone to shoot. The woman inside no longer has a choice- her choice was made the moment the Hunt turned her from woman to wolf- but she wonders what she would do if she had one.

For all intents and purposes, she does not let go of Jon’s leg. She bites down harder when Basira steps closer. Basira. (basira sorry sorry you promised sorry) Her partner, her _other._ And Basira begs, calls her by name, but how long as Alice Tonner not anything _but_ Daisy?

How long was it a choice? Or how long was it an easy segue to changing her name without raising eyebrows? (She remembers Calvin, the faces, the names she’d dragged to the same spot.) She can’t remember her childhood for anything outside of that stupid rusted fence- not parent or sibling- but she can remember Calvin. And she can remember when It first spoke to her.

_“… Come. ‘Sira. Come…”_

It all hits at once (lips against lips, the surreptitious locking of cop car doors, fingers digging into hips so hard they bruise). It is too much (jon’s throat scar, the quiet tangle of dirty hands seeking purchase, two bodies that never were meant to live this independent).

What is left of Daisy Tonner screams. Teeth clench and body tense, ready to throw Jon to illicit a reaction, any reaction (save, safe, _save from me_ —) until Basira coaxes her to dislodge her jaw. He ceases to exist in her mind’s eye, nothing but Basira’s barrel, but the shaking hands and frightful determination.

“Basira! Now!”


End file.
